Where is the time going... seems like the morning bell goes off and not too long after, the going home bell (as the kids call it) sounds off!!! Busy us... but fun busy! We did a bit of everything today. Kids were super 'furtif' during D.E.A.R. and so earned themselves a little surprise. We got Mlle. Karine, the French monitor, to play a quick French game with the kids before we delved heavily in our science unit.

Intramurals was fun today, I played with the Yellow but even so, the Blues took it to us. The perceived underdog just found mesh everytime they shot it seemed like. Good show les amis! Second effort pays off. Way to be!

Kids wanted a 'défi' today so we played boys against girls in the gym. If the ladies won, boys had to be extra nice to them, calling them Mademoiselle, letting them walk out of the classroom first etc. Now, if the boys won, the same went for them. Girls have to call them Monsieur etc. We had a passionate game needless to say. M. Beaulieu played with the girls and Ryoma was our goalie. Boys were hungry and going for it. The girls scored the first goal and the boys were like... 'What... they scored a goal on us!' Then they tied it. Girls got another one on a penatly shot. Boys tied it again. Then, the girls scored a third one with not much time left. They were seeing themselves being treated like princesses by the boys tomorrow but Shazam!!! Evan scored a beautiful 'spinorama' goal to tie it with seconds on the clock. Tight tight tight... so much so that kids wanted to have 'une revanche'... Tomorrow it is les amis!!!You can see the tension on the picutre... Laird & McKenna mean business. Big time business Parents, if you want to come and play with us. We are on at 1h30 in the gym. You are welcome to come help :) Hasta mañana !!!

What a game! Mucho action precursored by a Bass Rutten warm up... Bass is a retired Mixed Martial Artist ambassador. Originally from Holland, he needs to be thanked for what he contributed to his sports. As an hommage, we used one of his famous little warm up work out in the classroom. Defensel!!! Kids are getting good, blocking shots, screening the goalie, the odd one timer etc. Monsieur Beaulieu really enjoys playing sports with you les amis!! One of the ways to stay young is to play with young people... you guys are making me feel younger! Merci les amis!!! We deciphered some secret codes in E.L.A. just like they did it back in the day. We found some similies and made up some... all this was about our novels that we are reading. Kids can't resist... -'M.Beaulieu, can I please read ahead...' I get this too often now... negativo les amis. Otherwise, you will spoil some of the questions I prepared for you on the Smartboard... Close call... yesterday, I inadvertently earased a folder with all the blog pictures from the second term :( I know, major bummer. However, I was able to contact a different kind of magician and she got the folder back for us... Those pictures will fill up our 'je vois le future à chaque jour' bulletin board in the classroom so we are glad that we have them back. Plus, they will be nice souvenirs and will be in the year end envelope along with a DVD of our year together, the featuring compliments etc. All kids get to be on the blog at least once per term so they will get a few picutres come the end of the year. Montreal 4... Winnipeg 3 ! Oui Monsieur !Cheer them on again ce soir against Ottawa!!!You will be happy to know too that P.K. Suban is back... La coupe à Montreal !!!Ciao ciao

Well, our TG will be reborn by next week. I have researched those little spidermites and I have gotten us its kryptonite!!! Humidity... that's right. I went to Canadian Tire last night and picked us the weapon. I will arrange the set up so our fan blows into the humidifier's stream and keep everything nice and moist. I also got us a different Hight Pressure bulb. Lesser wattage and thus less heat. I think the combination of the 2 will make a huge difference. Also, we will only grow green leafy vegetables so it takes up less space, sucks up less water and grows faster! Win some and learn some right les amis!!! The kids will start picking others stuff to grow and by Parent/teacher interview round #2 we should have something to show you again parents!!! Intramurals... ouhhhhhhhhhhh today was mucho loco !!! Since it was an inside day due to Mother Nature we had pretty much the whole Division 2 going at it. Nicholas et Cassandra (our two refs of the day) did a fantastic job at keeping a lid on things and making sure the changes occur without any glitches. C'est beau les refs! (double clap). We have our date set up for Quilles. We have several field trips coming up. Bowling being the first one and that is happening next week on Thrusday February 7th at 1h00. Panorama Lanes gave us a 'deal' and so us and the grade 2 class will be taking over the bowling alleys. Parents, as usual, you are welcome to join us. The fee is 4$ per student but we will use our remaining $$$ from our classroom fundraiser to cut the price to 2$ per kid. Please send 2$ with your child as soon as possible. Parents however, you will have to pay the full 4$ :)

A quick note on E.L.A.! Today kids had a writting assignement and they had to use a Voice that was funny, serious (formal) or exciting. We had over half a dozen presenters. Besides the usual 'Questions pieges' that trick us more often than not, we were able to pick out the Voice every time. We also had a few good laughs with some parts of certain stories. We also had fun with our simple machine science unit today. We talked about one of the theories that the Egyptians might have built the famous pyramids. Logs, pulleys and levers could have been used to move some of those humongus blocks. You might have thought that Nic was crowdsurfing but negative, he was being an egyptian block while the boys were egyptians logs rotating and making Nic move from one side to the other... it was a good way to get into today's lesson!Make sure to watch your Habs crush the Jets tonight !!! Ton prof, signing out!!!

As usual, Monday started, Monday ended. In a flash!!! We had mass this morning in the gym instead of our regular Assembly. Kaylea will have to wait to next week to get her star. She finished #1 in her figure skating tournament and she has been helping out her teacher quite a bit with different tasks. Merci Kayley, c'est beau Kaylea!!! (double clap!!)We worked on our computers too. Believe it or not, our next vocab quiz is coming up already. We have 10 brand new words. M.Kennedy came to visit with the kids and we did our yearly accountability survey on-line. Shazam! That was our morning. Dawson is back from Mexico and visited about his trip with the kids as part of our morning speakers. He says he has a presentation for us. We can't wait to see it. Is it on Prezi Dawson? He also was the only one who had not presented his three affirmations. We had forgotten about him. He did well but Lily still stands tall as number 1!!! Lilly got herself a new prize! Thanks to Mme. Lamont, she was able to hook us up with some Dugout rebates!!! Merci Mme. Lamont (double clap!!!) The districk AISI handed out a student/parent perspective form. Please fill out and bring back by Frebruary 15th. I did some spidermites research and I am positive those little monsters will not be around again next time. We will reseed and restart with different varieties. Win some and learn some ! Right les amis! A demain, David

Are mask art project is now 'chose du passé'. Think you can guess who is on the picture? We are now ready for Mme. Franz, our Art Jedi Master teacher. She should be there next week so do not forget your dog/puppy picture les amis for next Friday. Get it from a magazine, print it off the internet etc. Well, our famous Détecteur de mensonge is finally over. Who's this year's winner? Did Cassandra & Laird keep their first place? Wait for it... wait for it... wait for it... Negative! Lily managed to pull off the impossible and fooled 20 of us this morning. That is right, she then took sole possession of the first place and never looked back. C'est beau Lily! (double clap). I even presented my 3 affirmations. My lie was that I did not like the Montréal Canadians anymore... I had good arguments but only fooled 6 kids... they we not buying it :) We still have over half a dozen kids who want to get a second chance. We shall sprinkle them in every now and then when we have some time left over. We had an epic game of hockey today. Ryoma stood as a fierce Samurai between the pipes frustrating the Blues. Erin on the Blue D was the equivalent of a wall. I had to go right instead of left because otherwise my shins were taking a beating and no shots could get through. We had a couple penalty shots but no one did capitalize. There was some great goals too. Who won this one les amis??? F.U.N. won it. That is right. I love to see the kids walking out of the gym all red and sweaty. We go back to the classroom and it is like being at the cabin by a calm lake up in the boonies. B.E.A.Utiful!!! P.s. : Remember les amis, NEVER ever give out your magic secrets... does not matter how much they ask, beg or gripe. People are always impressed with the magic but never with the secret. Ton prof, signing out!!!

Ouhhhhhhhhhh les amis you will be able to fool even the most clever of them. Yes yes yes, but.... you have to follow your promess to practice a few times in front of the mirror to get the moves and your patter down. Then and only then, perform it for you friends and family... Let me know how you make out alright!!!We had almost every kid bring back their Vocab quiz today, it was B.E.A.Utiful but half of these did NOT correct their mistakes.... I can tell you that having to do so before jumping from the sidelines to play with the rest of the class made them remember pretty quickly indeed. Sniff sniff... the DDM is almost done. Kids are pretty sad too, so much so that I have had several of them coming up to me so they could go for a second round!!! We might just draw a few extras participants but obvioulsy they will not count towards the rankings. We reviewed equivalent fractions today with 'un dénominateur commun'. Ask me if this will be on the next math quiz les amis? Know it to be true!!! It is one of the hardest concepts for sure in that unit but I think we made quite a bit of headway today. Epiphany moment for a few students. That was good! Those manipulatives sure are handy and analogies to pizza always helps to get some concepts across :) We can see Kaylea here using the props while Lair is trying to hijack the picture in the background.We are also moving along quite nicely in our 'romans'. Kids have a couple chapters to go through for next Monday since there is no school on Friday for students. I think I would have read at least one book in elementary had we used Smartboard lessons like today. Even for me as a teacher, I dig these lessons. Always fun to play with technology. Hasta mañana les jeunesses!!!

Hola, we had Safety City coming today. Laura spoke about Internet Safety and what going on-line might entail nowadays. There were two presentations. One for the Grade 4s and another one for the 5s. They shall be back again in March and April to talk about bullying. We can see Laird here working away during the grade 4 presentation. I had to disturb him for a bit to take a picutre of him! Detecteur de mensonge! We are closing in on our winners. We did a couple more presentations today and we only have a couple left. Cassandra et Laird seem to be pretty solidly installed at #1... Are Evan or Lily going to dethrone the champs les amis? Everything is possible... We finished week one through five with Sentence Fluency in E.L.A. We are now onto Voice... only a couple units left already! You rock les amis. We are plowing through the curriculum. Way to be les amis!!!Yes les amis we are going to go play Quilles mucho soon. M. Beaulieu is arranging the l

We can see Ethan enjoying his netbook and headphones. We have been flying today like every Monday. We rocked at Détecteur de mensonge as we found most of the lies... We had several kids who found all three from three different presenters. Cassandra et Laird are still sitting at number one. We should finish this week and proclaim our winners !!! We have a new star this week too. Quite the glamour little gal too, pretty stingy on giving autographs... see the home page picture. We had Mme. Franz come in too. It was a nice surprise. She is a French lady who is no less than a Jedi Master in Arts... Oui Monsieur, we shall have her back this year as her schedule opened up. The grade 4&5s had not met her. She is a wonderful lady. We are looking to have her coming right before la St-Valentin. What else is new in our world??? Well... we have some mites... yes those darn nefarious spider mites. I am weighing my options. Neem works well so we'll go with that first. Last thing I want to have to do is destroy, bleach and reseed... no one wants to do that. We played Mort Subite & Dodgeball in the gym today to mix it up. I think everybody welcomed the change. We have the people from Safety city coming in tomorrow morning. They will engage the kids about Internet safety. They will be back in a few months to talk about bullying. Ton prof, signing out!

Career day today... yes we had some of everything. Very imaginative and original attires. Well done les amis. I dig your style Zack!!! We also had journalists, figure skaters, scientists, vets, Hockey/Lacrosse players, a drummer and then some!!!Friday it is. Friday is always a happy day is it not les amis? We could be learning about new verb tenses and conjugating all day and it would still be fun right? Not... we still need to make things challenging and interesting. Like trying to break dance with my hockey helmet and bust out a head stand windmill... easier with a good old tuque I guess!! Before the folks from the sicence fair came in to help out with our projects, we scurried to the gym to follow up on yesterday's break dancing session. We had more action, I took some great pictures and kids are putting it together more and more. We tried to combine moves today and it is coming together les amis. You are feeling the beat and it is looking better and better. I have said this before les amis but let me say it again, you are naturals!!!We did another wave of exposés today. Wait for it... wait for it... wait for it... Negativo!!! Cassandra and Laird are still in first place fooling all but 4 kids. Andre and Ethan Smith are still in 2nd and 3rd respectively. Nothing changed but we still had two great exposes and fun while doing it. Our pool of presenters is dwindling down... will Cassandra and Laird be dethroned... to be continued. Make yourselves a fantastic weekend les amis!!!

We took advantage of having Mlle. Karine with us to complete our masks. There are some very funky ones and they will all be pinned on our bulletin boards for you to see parents whenever you are by. We can see Kaelix's here with the pirate style. The colors did not come out too well with my 1000$ camera but his mask his very cool. Very well done les amis, we'll draw a couple names tomorrow because we have 2 templates left and lots of kids who want to do another one. We had a fire drill today while we were break dancing and giving it large on the gym floor. We reviewed some moves we had learnt and learnt a new one. The flying turtle... we had a 10-minute circle, a solid breaking beat going on our classroom getto blaster and lots of fun. Pretty much everybody went it and showcased their ever improving skills. We had some top rock, some down rock, some pop in, some six steps, some flying turtles, some classic moves and then some. Rock on les amis!!! Now we need to come up with some trendy names like the break dancers do... What else is new in our grade 4&5 world. Ouhhhhhhhhh, it was a sad morning for a few kids today. M. Beaulieu had to pull a few plants... I know les amis... but it had to be done. During my daily rounds of prunning etc. I noticed the infamous spider-mites on our citrouilles. Since they were not doing well and not bearing any fruit I decided to give a chance to other kind plants to grow. The bottom shelf looks bear since the citrouilles had taken up lots of space with their giant solar panel leaves. Not to worry les amis, we will get you growing other plants in no time. Manana is Friday already, yes you read that right. I can't believe how fast this week has gone. Isn't that how life goes too... to fast! Oh, I almost forgot, we did our vocab quiz today and had I'm yours from Jason Mraz as our fill in the blank song. Kids loved it and we sang it as we danced our little hearts out just before la Bibli. Mme. Graham likes when the kids are tired, they pay attention better when she reads them a story. Ciao ciao !